Visio 2010 Add-In for WBS Modeler - User Guide

WBS Modeler A Microsoft Visio 2010 Add-In Implementation

2010

Documentation for Visio WBS Modeler

Contents

1 Introduction 31.1 Purpose....................................................................................................3

2 Installation 42.1 Pre-requisites...........................................................................................42.2 Installation procedure..............................................................................4

3 Getting Started 93.1 Selecting/Opening the WBS Modeler Template........................................9

4 Import from Microsoft Office Project 104.1 The Import Process................................................................................10

5 Modeling Process 145.1 Icons......................................................................................................145.2 Functions / Ribbon.................................................................................155.3 Custom Properties.................................................................................225.4 Process..................................................................................................235.4.1 Creating elements..............................................................................23

5.4.2 Linking elements................................................................................25

5.4.3 Arranging elements............................................................................27

5.4.4 Hiding elements.................................................................................31

5.4.5 Renaming elements...........................................................................32

5.4.6 Moving elements................................................................................33

5.4.7 Deleting elements..............................................................................34

6 Reporting 35

7 Export to Microsoft Office Project 387.1 Compare with Microsoft Office Project...................................................387.2 Review Differences................................................................................397.3 Export to Microsoft Office Project...........................................................42

8 Removal of WBS Modeler 44

Page 2 of 45


1 Introduction

1.1 Purpose

The Visio WBS Modeler (WBS Modeler in the following) is intended to improve the project planning process by giving the opportunity to generate Project Plans from a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) using a graphical representation of elements.

A WBS structure is a hierarchical representation of the elements and sub-ele-ments in a project (see Figure 1).

Level 1

Level 2

Figure 1: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) example

The WBS Modeler can either be used to visualize and edit an existing project plan or to create a new project plan in Microsoft Visio 2010 Professional and then ex-port it to Microsoft Office Project (2003+) to carry out the next planning steps.

The Application enables effective integration of Visio with Microsoft Office Project. It provides an approach to visually and graphically create, edit and modify project plans using Visio.

The WBS Modeler offers the ability to manage project elements in a graphical view, as well as offering functionality to layout a WBS in Visio. The WBS can be ex-ported back to Microsoft Office Project into a new project plan. It is also possible to update an existing plan.

To organize the structure within a WBS Modeler the outline code from Microsoft Office Project is utilised.

Page 3 of 45

2 Installation

2.1 Pre-requisites

Microsoft Visio 2010 Professional

Microsoft Office Project 2003 SP1 or later

.NET Framework 2.0

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

Microsoft Visio 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=59daebaa-bed4-4282-a28c-b864d8bfa513&displaylang=en

2.2 Installation procedure

Please ensure that Microsoft Office Visio is not running. To start the installation process, double-click the file WBSModelerSetup.msi and click Next in the fol-lowing screen.

Figure 2: Welcome Screen

The License Agreement screen appears. If you accept the terms, click I Agree, and then click Next.






Figure 3: License Agreement

The Setup Installation Path and Disk Space Information screen appears.

Figure 4: Set Up Installation Path and Disk Space Information

Page 5 of 45


Click Next, for the default path or click Browse to select the destination folder path.

To check the Disk Space Required, click Disk Cost.

Figure 5: WBS Modeler Add-in Disk Space

Click Next on figure 4 to continue. The Confirm Installation screen appears. Click Next to begin installation or Cancel to exit the setup wizard.

Note: If you want make any changes to the installation settings or go back to the previous pages, click Back.

Page 6 of 45


Figure 6: Confirm Installation

The following window will provide progress information of the setup process.

Figure 7: Progress window

Page 7 of 45


Note: Please wait while the setup wizard installs the WBS Modeler Add-in. This may take a few minutes.

To cancel the installation click Cancel.

Once the installation is successful the Installation Complete screen appears.

Figure 8: Installation Complete

Page 8 of 45


3 Getting Started

1. This section describes the basic flow of the reference implementation.

2. The Microsoft Office Visio 2010 Add-in for WBS Modeler is a Visio Add-In that starts up automatically with Visio.

3.1 Selecting/Opening the WBS Modeler Template

The Add-In when installed adds a new template WBS Modeler under WBS Tem-plates Category.

1. Open Visio.2. Select Add-ins from the Template Categories list.3. Select WBS Modeler from the Featured Templates group. 4. Click on the Create button or double click on WBS Modeler from Fea-

tured Templates group.

Figure 9: Selecting the template

5. A new ribbon WBS Modeler is added as the template opens a new document.

Page 9 of 45


4 Import from Microsoft Office Project

4.1 The Import Process

The import process is designed to extract data from a plan in Microsoft Office Pro-ject to be used in WBS Modeler. To acquire the data the plan has to be opened in Microsoft Office Project (see Figure 10).

Figure 10: Project - Default View

Once the project plan is open in Microsoft Office Project, switch to Visio and open the WBS Modeler drawing type template as described above. Select the option Import from Microsoft Office Project Database from the WBS Modeler rib-bon in Visio (see Figure 11).

Page 10 of 45


Figure 11: WBS Modeler Ribbon

The import process might take some time depending on system performance. A window will indicate the progress (see Figure 12).

Figure 12: Import progress window

After the process has finished the Project Element Selector window will auto-matically be displayed (see Figure 13).

Page 11 of 45


Figure 13: Project Element Selector

In this window you will be able to choose the elements or sub-elements to be drawn in Visio. If you select a sub-element and then click on Draw, this sub-ele-ment and all of its children will be drawn as a WBS (see Figure 14).

Figure 14: Work Breakdown Structure for a sub-element

Page 12 of 45


The same applies if you choose to import the project summary element; the re-sulting WBS will in most cases be considerably bigger and due to limitations in the layout process not aligned as in the previous example. However, the layout can easily be improved using the functionality provided by WBS Modeler as described in the Modeling section later in this document.

Page 13 of 45


5 Modeling ProcessThe Modeling process in WBS Modeler offers a wide variety of options to manipu-late the WBS data and layout.

In the following section the basic elements of the WBS Modeler are presented and explained. Based on this introduction, the process to create and modify a WBS from scratch is explained.

The modification of an imported WBS will not be explained separately as it is basi-cally the same as creating and modifying a newly created WBS. The only differ-ence is that the import process has to be completed beforehand.

5.1 Icons

Icon Description

The WBS Modeler Shape repository con-tains one shape to represent elements and sub-elements.

To add a shape to the plan you can simply drag and drop the shape to the drawing pane.

Page 14 of 45


Icon Description

If you drag and drop an element to the drawing pane you will see a blue element symbol as shown on the left side. The blue shading indicates that the element is not connected to another element.

The four boxes in each corner are called Smart Tags and will be visible if you se-lect an element. These are explained in more detail in following section.

In each of the four corner of an element shape there will appear icons if certain conditions apply.

A diamond shape will be displayed in the right top corner if the ele-ment is a milestone.

The triangle shape will be shown in the right bottom corner if the element is associated to an off-page reference.

The circle shape in the left top corner will be shown if the ele-ment has been linked to an ele-ment in a project plan from Microsoft Office Project.

A square shape will appear in the left bottom corner when an ele-ment has child elements.

5.2 Functions / Ribbon

The following chapter provides a brief description of the ribbon items and func-tions of the WBS Modeler.

Ribbon Description

The WBS Modeler ribbon contains six rib-bon items:

Import from Microsoft Office Project … can be used to import a project plan, i.e. the WBS struc-ture of a project plan from Microsoft Office Project.

The Compare with Microsoft Office Project function is de-signed to facilitate the comparison between the work-breakdown

Page 15 of 45


Ribbon Description

structure in Visio and the structure of the same plan or a different version of the same plan in Microsoft Office Project.

Export to Microsoft Office Pro-ject offers the ability to export a WBS structure to Microsoft Office Project. This process is described in section 6 of this document.

The View Element Explorer se-lector can be used to show or hide the WBS Element Explorer win-dow. The default setting is to show the window.

Help to open the help document of the WBS Modeler.

About WBS Modeler is intended to provide information about the authors and the version of WBS Modeler.

The context menu for the This Docu-ment tab in the WBS Explorer offers sev-eral options to manipulate a WBS.

Rename can be used to rename elements in the WBS.

Redraw is only available on a page level and is used to re-import and rebuild an automatic layout for a plan originally imported from Microsoft Office Project.

The Re-size Page function will resize the drawing page so that the WBS structure displays will fit on the page. This function will also ensure that the aspect ratio for the page is maintained to simplify the printing process.

Reset all shapes will reset colour changes for all shapes on the page. Colour changes may occur for instance if a plan has been im-ported, has been changed and has been compared to the original plan in Microsoft Office Project.

Page 16 of 45


Ribbon Description

The Show function can be used to jump directly to an element. This function is useful for very large WBS to quickly locate elements. This function is identical to double-clicking an element in the WBS Element Explorer’s This Docu-ment tab.

The Properties option can be used to open the Custom Proper-ties window for the selected ele-ment. This function is identical to double-clicking an element in the drawing area.

New can be used to create a new child element for the selected ele-ment. If the page name is selected a new element without connection to any other element will be cre-ated.

The Delete function can be used to delete elements or a subset of elements from the plan. If a parent element with one or more child elements is selected a confirma-tion dialogue will be displayed whether to delete the child ele-ments as well or not. If the child elements are kept they will be connected to the parent element of the deleted element if present.

Move Down / Move Up can be used to move an element up or down within the currently selected WBS level.

The Selected Project tab in the WBS Element Explorer is designed to show dif-ferences between an imported WBS structure and the original project plan. The differences are not maintained auto-matically.

Compare with Project is to be used to update the outline struc-ture displayed in the Selected Project tab.

The Review Differences function can be used to review the differ-

Page 17 of 45


Ribbon Description

ences between the plan in Microsoft Office Project and the current WBS structure.

The option Add child elements provides the function to add sub-elements to the currently selected element.

Add sibling elements option is de-signed to create a new sibling element. The newly created element will automat-ically be connected to the common par-ent element.

Add a space is used to add a space to the left of the selected element between two sibling elements.

The same applies to Remove a space which removes one space from the left of the currently selected element.

The option Remove all spaces will re-move all spaces for the current element.

The Properties menu can be used to modify and monitor information for each individual element.

Using the selected element as the start-ing point several selections can be made.

The parent element can be selected, sib-ling elements can be selected or the sub-elements for the currently selected ele-ment can be selected.

The Move Up/Left function moves an element in the current outline level to the left or up a level, e.g. move element 1.5.8 to 1.5.7. Move Down/Right moves an element down a level, e.g. move element 1.5.7 to 1.5.8.

Arrange elements vertically/horizont-ally can be used to arrange sub-elements of the current selected element vertically or horizontally. Sometimes this is needed to do a proper layout or to fit the WBS on one screen.

The option Hide Children can be used to hide children of the currently selected element. This option might be useful to enhance readability.

Page 18 of 45


Ribbon Description

If you right-click on an element a menu will be shown that aggregates most of the above mentioned options and menu items.

The option Create off-page reference is designed to create a reference to a subset of sub-elements. If you select this option on a sub-element this element and its sub-elements will be drawn on a new page. They will be linked against the ori-ginal element. If you double-click the ele-ment the system will jump back to the original WBS. In the original WBS the off-page-reference is indicated by a triangle.

Cut, Copy, Paste, View, Format and Shape are default items of Microsoft Of-fice Visio. These are all explained in detail in the Visio help system.

Properties will open the properties of the element which will be covered in the following.

Page 19 of 45


Ribbon Description

On the Shape Data page you can view and edit the properties for each element.

If you choose Label Wizard you will be able to select the Shape Type for which the settings should be applied. Possible selections are: <all selected shapes>, <all shapes>, Element.

For each element there are 4 Lines/Labels which can be changed. The available op-tions are identical with the options listed in the Custom Properties dialogue.

If you choose View – Shape Data Win-dow the following properties can be viewed and modified.

The setting Prompt for Input is set to FALSE by default. If set to TRUE the user will be prompted to enter the element name and the outline number when adding a new element.

If Hide extra Project properties is set to FALSE (default value) the following additional fields will be displayed in the

Page 20 of 45


Ribbon Description

Shape Data window:

Cost

Estimated

% Complete

Duration

Resource

ID

Unique ID

Milestone

Start

Finish

Predecessor

If Hide Element layout properties is set to FALSE (default setting) the follow-ing additional information will be dis-played in the Shape Data window for elements:

Vertical Sub Element

Vertical Spacing

Horizontal Spacing

Hide Children

Spaces

If Hide read only properties is set to FALSE (default is TRUE) the following additional properties will be displayed in the Shape Data window for elements:

Page Name

Page Number

File Name

Label Name

Label WBS

The Keep focus on parent is set to TRUE by default. If this option is set to FALSE the selection will be moved to the child elements instead of the parent ele-ment when connecting elements.

Page 21 of 45


5.3 Custom Properties

Property Description

Element Name Name of the element

Outline Number Position of the element in the WBS/Outline;

The Outline Number represents the level of the ele-ment within the work breakdown structure of the plan. If only a part of the whole plan is imported from Microsoft Office Project this will refer to the original structure of the plan.

This information will be used to update the relevant parts of the project plan when the plan is exported back to Microsoft Office Project.

WBS Code The WBS Code is used to store information about the original WBS value of a plan as imported from Microsoft Office Project.

Element Project This field is designed to store information about the project an element belongs to.

Vertical Sub Elements Child elements associated with this element will be ar-ranged vertically if set to TRUE (default). If set to FALSE child elements will be arranged horizontally.

Vertical Spacing This option will affect all direct child elements of the cur-rently selected element. The options available are:

Tightest, tight, normal, loose, loosest.

Horizontal Spacing This option will affect all direct child elements of the cur-rently selected element. The options available are:

tightest, tight, normal, loose, loosest.

Hide Children If set to TRUE all children of the currently selected ele-ment will be hidden. If set to FALSE hidden elements will be visible again.

Spaces Determines the spaces left to or above the currently se-lected element depending on the parent element’s Ver-tical Sub Element setting.

Page Name Read-Only field for the name of the page the element is currently being displayed in.

Page Number Read-Only field for the number of the page the element is currently being displayed in.

File Name Read-only field to display the Visio file name.

Label Name Read-only field for the element name as the display area length is limited to 24 characters.

Label WBS Read-only field to display the element label for the WBS Code.

Page 22 of 45


If the WBS code is different from the Outline number it will be displayed as: “1.2.5 [1.2.6]” where the first num-ber represents the Outline Number and the number in brackets represents the WBS Code as originally read from Microsoft Office Project.

5.4 Process

This chapter covers the functionality of the WBS Modeler and how the functions and ribbon items briefly described in the previous two sections can be used.

5.4.1 Creating elements

5.4.1.1 Drag and drop

To create a new element simply drag and drop an element shape from the Shapes container to the drawing area (see Figure 15).

Figure 15: Create new element

The prompt for the Element Name and Outline Number will open automatically after the element has been dropped to drawing area. The Outline Number will be recalculated once the element has been connected to another element to achieve consistency.

5.4.1.2 Add child element / add sibling element

Another possible option to add child / sibling elements to another element is to se-lect the parent/sibling element the new elements should be connected to and choose to add child elements or select sibling elements from the context menu (right-click on a element; see Figure 16).

Page 23 of 45


Figure 16: Creating new sibling/child element(s) #1

If you choose Add child elements or Add sibling elements you will be promp-ted for the element names to be added (see Figure 17). Each line in this window resembles one element to be added.

Figure 17: Creating new sibling/child element(s) #2 – add child element(s)

The result if two child elements have been created will look like shown in Figure18.

Page 24 of 45


Figure 18: Creating new child element(s)

The result if two sibling elements have been created will look like shown in Figure19.

Figure 19: Creating new sibling element(s)

5.4.2 Linking elements

To link two or more elements the following steps have to be carried out:

1. Select the parent element.

Figure 20: Connect sub-elements #1

2. Hold the ctrl key to select the child element(s) that you want to connect to the parent element.

Page 25 of 45



3. Right-click on the parent element and select the option Connect child elements.


The result will look similar to Figure 23.

Page 26 of 45



The outline level of the child elements will automatically be updated during this process (see Figure 23 & Figure 21).

NOTE: The element, that you want the other elements to connect to, has to be selected last; otherwise, the following error message is displayed.

Figure 24: Error message - Task can only have one parent

5.4.3 Arranging elements

The child elements for an element can either be arranged horizontally or vertic-ally. The default is Arrange child elements horizontally for the first level and vertically for the levels below that (see Figure 25).

Page 27 of 45


Figure 25: Custom element menu – Element arrangement (horizontally)

If Arrange child elements vertically option is selected, the child elements for the selected element will be arranged vertically instead of horizontally (see Figure26).

Page 28 of 45


Figure 26: Element arrangement (vertically)

Any combination of arrangements is possible.

NOTE: To avoid the overlapping of elements it might be necessary to add one or more spaces between elements.

Figure 27: elements with default number of spaces

To add a space between two children elements on the same level simply click on

the sign and select Add a space (see Figure 28). If the arrangement is set to horizontally the space will be added on the same WBS level and it will be added to the left of the currently selected element or sub-element. If the arrangement is set to vertically the space will be added directly above the currently selected ele-ment.

Figure 28: elements with one extra space

The removal of spaces can be done accordingly. If the arrangement is horizontal the right element where the space(s) should be removed has to be selected, for vertical spacing the elements directly below the spaces have to be selected. If

Page 29 of 45


Remove a space is selected one space will be removed at a time. The Remove all spaces option can be used to remove more than one space between two ele-ments.

By combining vertical and horizontal arrangement and by adding or removing spaces it is possible to achieve a noticeably good layout even for rather large work breakdown structures. Sometimes it might be necessary to hide a set of child elements to achieve a good and printable layout. When importing a plan, the WBS Modeler will try to automatically layout the plan and hide child elements above a certain level (see Figure 29).

Figure 29: Automatic Layout of large WBS (example)

Page 30 of 45


5.4.4 Hiding elements

To hide a set of elements right-click the parent element and select Hide Children option (see Figure 30).

Figure 30: Hide Children

The hidden child elements will be visualized with a shadow line as shown in the following example (Figure 31).

Figure 31: Visualization of an element containing hidden sub-elements

Page 31 of 45


5.4.5 Renaming elements

Renaming elements in WBS Modeler is straightforward. Double-click an element to open the Shape Data dialogue (see Figure 32).

Figure 32: Shape Data

On this dialogue box you can view and modify the element information. This infor-mation may change depending on the selections made for the page properties. Figure 32 shows the information displayed by default.

Page 32 of 45


5.4.6 Moving elements

To move an element up/left or down/right the user has to select an element and choose the appropriate direction from the Move Elements Smart Tag or from the context menu (see Figure 33).

Figure 33: Menu items to move an element

The screenshot below displays an element that has been moved (see Figure 34). Please not, if you move an element with child elements, these will be moved ac-cordingly.

Figure 34: Moving element to the left

Page 33 of 45


5.4.7 Deleting elements

To delete an element select the element that you want to delete and press the Delete button on your keyboard. If the selected element contains sub-elements the user will be prompted to confirm the deletion (Figure 35).

Figure 35: Deleting child elements #1

If Yes is chosen the selected element and its child elements will be deleted (see Figure 36).

Figure 36: Deleting child elements #2

If No is chosen the selected element will be deleted and its child elements will be connected to its parent-element (see Figure 37). If no parent element is present the child elements will remain but will not be connected.

Figure 37: Deleting elements #3 - keeping children

Page 34 of 45


6 ReportingThe WBS Modeler also contains some templates to generate Reports for a WBS structure. To trigger a report in Visio choose Shape Reports from Review rib-bon tab (see Figure 38).

Figure 38: Reporting #1

On the following dialogue one of the default templates delivered with WBS Mod-eler can be selected or a new one can be created (see Figure 39). The process of creating a new template is not specific to WBS Modeler and is thus not covered in this document.

Page 35 of 45


Figure 39: Choose Report

Select the report and press Run to generate the report.

Figure 40: Run Report window

Page 36 of 45


Select the format for the report and click OK.

Figure 41: Sample Flowchart Report

Page 37 of 45


7 Export to Microsoft Office Project

7.1 Compare with Microsoft Office Project

WBS Modeler offers an option to compare the current WBS in Visio with a project plan in Microsoft Office Project 2003 or later.

To import a project plan to WBS Modeler, work with the plan in Visio and compare the data in Visio with the plan in Microsoft Office Project using Compare with Microsoft Office Project option in the WBS Modeler ribbon (see Figure 42).

Figure 42: Compare with Microsoft Office Project (WBS Modeler ribbon)

Afterwards just click Compare (see Figure 43). If you have more than one project open, i.e. different versions of the same plan you can choose another version to compare with the current WBS structure in Visio. The project plan which has been selected here will be linked to the WBS structure afterwards.

Figure 43: Project Element Selector (Comparison)

Page 38 of 45


Figure 44: Selected Project Outline differences

The same analysis can be done using Compare with Project option from the WBS Element Explorer context menu. However this will only compare the project to the project plan to which the WBS is currently being linked to and there-fore no Project Element Selector window will be shown.

Figure 45: Compare with Microsoft Office Project (WBS Element Explorer context menu)

7.2 Review Differences

Once the Compare with Project from the WBS Element Explorer context menu or Compare with Microsoft Office Project option from the WBS Modeler ribbon has been executed, the Review Differences function can be executed (see Figure 46).

Page 39 of 45


Figure 46: Review Differences window

The Review Differences windows can be used to check which changes have been made to the WBS in comparison to the plan still in Microsoft Office Project. The Copy button can be used to copy the results to the clipboard (see Figure 47).

Page 40 of 45


Figure 47: Differences - Clipboard contents

This information can be used to update a project plan manually or to track changes to a WBS diagram in Visio.

Page 41 of 45


7.3 Export to Microsoft Office Project

1. To export a plan to Microsoft Office Project selects the Export to Microsoft Office Project option from the WBS Modeler ribbon.

2. User is prompted for file and location of the new project file that will be cre-ated. The default location is My Documents and the default file name is the same name as the Visio drawing file name but with the Project file type (See Figure 48).

Figure 48: Export to Project

3. User chooses a location and file name and clicks the Save button.

4. The user is prompted “Would you like to link this diagram to the ex-ported Project file?”

Figure 49: Link to Project

Page 42 of 45


5. Select Yes if you need to set the linked project to this new Project file.

6. The new project file is generated based on the shapes in the Visio WBS dia-gram.

Figure 50: Result of the export process

Page 43 of 45


8 Removal of WBS ModelerPlease ensure that Microsoft Office Visio is not running. To start the uninstall pro-cess click Uninstall a program in the Control Panel.

Figure 51: Add/Remove Programs

In the Programs and Features screen select the entry WBS Modeler and click on Uninstall.

Page 44 of 45


Figure 52: Remove WBS Modeler

In the following screen click on Yes to confirm that you really want to remove the WBS Modeler.

Figure 53: Confirm Program Remove

Page 45 of 45

Date post:	02-Dec-2014
Category:	Documents
Upload:	claudieira
View:	130 times
Download:	5 times